Autonomous underwater vehicle docking system based on wired transmission

Abstract

The Shenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Science has developed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) docking system to charge AUVs undersea. The whole project of the docking system was based on acoustic positioning and hydraulic driving. We have provided a funnel docking station equipped with axial adjusting mechanism, clamping mechanism and plugging and pulling out mechanism which adopts direct contact high-power charging manner and made some modifications to the AUV. The system has been successfully demonstrated autonomous homing and docking, wired charging and data downloading in the Qiandao Lake of Zhejiang Province. The lake trial results show that the docking station can effectively adjust the posture of the AUV. Docking system has high success rate and great engineering application value. This paper presents the design, development, trialing and results of the docking system for 534.4 AUV.